Bundestagswahl 2017: The wider the band, the giga the country

The issue of broadband expansion is a good example of the fact that strategic mistakes can not be corrected with much money afterwards at the beginning of a legislative period. In the coalition agreement, the grand coalition spread social benefits to a particular electorate, instead of investing in the future viable infrastructure for all. Is such a decision still threatening after the next Bundestag election? A look at the election programs shows that at least full-bodied announcements for the broadband expansion at least is not lacking.

The fact that the topic still has a lot to do, a recent survey by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) recently showed. According to this, the dissatisfaction of industrial enterprises with the broadband connection continues to grow. With the score of 3.7, the assessment of the location factor has deteriorated as clearly as with no other. While it was still 2.3 in 2008, it declined continuously from 2.5 (2011) to 3.1 (2014).
Gigabit company with "real-time" Internet
Federal Minister of Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) has already distributed more than 500 subsidy awards in recent years. However, of the 1.56 billion euro budgeted in the budget between 2015 and 2017, only 13.9 million euros – 0.9% – have been obtained. Union and the SPD continue to pursue their goal of ensuring that by 2018 all German households have at least a broadband access with 50 MBit / s. At the beginning of 2017 the share was only 75 percent.
Rather than conceding that this goal can not be achieved in a number of rural regions, the Union is setting much higher targets in its election program. "We are creating the 'gigabit society': Germany is supposed to be the country where data is available in real time, everywhere and for all, in the city and in the country, in the east and in the West Transport, medicine, communication. "

5G expansion by 2025
Whoever has put the flea of ​​the "real-time" Internet in the ear of the Union: There are few reasons why there must be latencies of a few milliseconds on the Internet. Or in the transport sector: While an airbag and an ABS system really have to react so quickly, this is by no means so critical in situations that are still outside the field of view and hundreds of meters away. In any case, the term "real-time" is not associated with any particular duration. If a ping to Golem.de over WLAN and Festnetz lasts 20 milliseconds, that is sufficient to read in "real-time" the messages.
The CDU and CSU should also be clear that a gigabit company can not be built with vectoring, but only with glass fiber. However, clear objectives for fiber optics are missing in the program. Instead, it says: "Germany and Europe will have to be the lead market for the new 5G mobile radio. (…) We will create the conditions for expansion by 2020 and will bring it to a close by 2025."